This application claims the benefit of Korean Application Nos. 99-16462, filed May 8, 1999, 99-16973, filed May 12, 1999 and 99-23947, filed Jun. 24, 1999, in the Korean Patent Office, the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of optical recording media having continuous basic recording units, and more particularly, to a recording medium for storing linking type information which indicates whether a linking scheme applies to an area immediately after a defective area and a method of processing a defective area using the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
Since basic recording units of a digital versatile disc-rewritable (DVD-RW) and a digital versatile-recordable (DVD-R) are positioned continuously, contrary to those of a DVD-Random Access Memory (DVD-RAM) which are divided by physical identifier (PID) areas or buffer fields (extra areas allocated to correspond to a requirement for controlling a spindle motor accurately), it is required that a recording-start point of each basic unit in a DVD-RW is precisely located. The basic recording unit of the DVD-RAM can be a sector and the basic recording unit of the DVD-RW can be an error correction code (ECC) block.
Since the basic recording units of the DVD-R and the DVD-RW, which have the same physical formats, are positioned continuously as described above, for an incremental recording mode, that is, the mode in which data transmission is momentarily discontinued or new data is recorded following the previous data, the DVD-R and the DVD-RW use a linking scheme in which a predetermined number of bytes (for example, 3 bytes) of a next recording-start point are allocated as a linking area. In addition, there are two linking area sizes which are applied in incremental recording; 2 kilobytes and 32 kilobytes.
FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating the linking scheme which occurs in the general incremental recording mode, and shows old data 4, the 32-kilobyte linking area 2 and new data 7. Referring to FIG. 1, when recording of old data 4 is completed without filling up the basic recording unit (the ECC block unit in FIG. 1), padding data 5 is recorded from the remaining portion of the basic recording unit, where no data is recorded, to a first sector after a sync mark 1. Recording of the new user data 7 begins after recording linking data 6 in the 32-kilobyte linking area 2 for the incremental recording.
In the case of DVD-RW, when a defective area is registered in a defective area list which is registered in a recording management data (RMD) area, the DVD-RW uses a restricted overwrite recording mode along with the linking scheme similar to the incremental recording mode when recording actual user data after the registered defective area. Therefore, the current DVD-RW specification only applies a linking scheme for the incremental recording mode and the restricted overwrite recording mode. The DVD-RW specification does not define specific linking schemes for processing a defective area, such as defining a linking area after a defective area.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide a recording medium for storing linking type information which indicates whether linking occurs immediately after a defective area, in the recording medium in which basic recording units are positioned continuously.
It is another object to provide a recording medium in which a predetermined number of error correction code (ECC) blocks, which have the same effect as a linking area, are allocated immediately after a defective area, in the recording medium in which basic recording units are positioned continuously.
It is still another object to provide a method of processing a defective area in which user data is recorded after allocating a predetermined linking area immediately after a defective area according to linking type information which indicates whether linking occurs immediately after a defective area in recording.
It is yet still another object to provide a method of processing a defective area in which recording of a user data begins after a predetermined number of ECC blocks following a defective area.
Additional objects and advantages of the invention will be set forth in part in the description which follows and, in part, will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention.
To achieve the above objectives and other objectives of the present invention a method of processing defective areas in a recording medium having continuous basic recording units and processing defective areas, comprises detecting the defective areas that occur during certification before recording user data and the defective areas that occur while recording the user data, registering a list of the defective areas in a defect management area of the recording medium, and storing in a predetermined area of the recording medium additional information indicating whether a predetermined linking scheme is applied to, specified in, or occurs in a linking area immediately after one of the defective areas.
Further, a method of processing a defective area before recording user data or while recording the user data in a recording medium having continuous basic recording units, comprising recording the user data after specifying a predetermined linking scheme in a linking area immediately after the defective area if the defective area is found while recording the user data in one of the basic recording units.